


Up the Ladder

by orphan_account



Category: The Get Down (TV)
Genre: Angst and Feels, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Songfic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-13
Updated: 2016-12-13
Packaged: 2018-09-08 06:18:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,666
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8833630
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: Mylene goes all the way up the ladder.





	

**Author's Note:**

> a) I want to bring back songfics because I feel like they need a real makeover and b) here it is ... a completely Mylene-centric fic that focuses on her growth! And I know it says angst - child abuse, but I did not want to shy away from the fact that her father is a Huge Ass.

Mylene was thirteen when her father drowned her.

They see things differently. When she’s an older woman, sipping wine and talking to her father on the phone, he’ll call it a baptism. She’s not a stupid girl, and never has been. That was different from a baptism, she knew. Baptisms were clean, smooth and done up in white. The people wore long robes and went under babbling, screaming for forgiveness and came up different. They’ve been redeemed, dipped in holy water and purified. God was with them, within them. Miracles happened under that water – the black souls of the Bronx were dipped in Lamb’s red blood and came out white as snow.

Her daddy said people came to life in that water.

So, why did Mylene feel like she couldn’t breathe? She thrashed, scratched even though her father has told her children were not to hit their parents. She’s screamed like the people that go under, but her cries were not the cries of a person made new. They were terrified screams – scared of death, scared of blacking out. If Jesus was water, then he was in her throat, in her lungs. Jesus was slipping from her eyes, down her wet cheeks and becoming indistinguishable from the too cold bath.

“ _Por favor! Parate! Me siento_!” She spoke between the water and the times when she is let up. Her father gives her only a second, two at most, to breathe before pushing her back under.

He did not respond to her pleading. He quoted scripture, lashing her with words from the bible. Her father yelled into her face, angry spittle on her cheeks, on her eyelids.

She’s under again. Eyes open, she looked up and saw the world differently. Miracles do happen underneath the water, but not in the way her father taught them. The water puts bitterness into little girls, turns them into women too fast. It gives kind fathers horn and bared teeth. It makes the tap water sound loud, louder than her mother banging on the door and screaming for her father to stop.

“Ramon! Ramon, you’re killing her!”

The door handle shook. Her mother came in – finally and too late – and she’s freed. Some realization came over her father’s face and then guilt. His mouth is full of apologies, of sorrow.

Mylene does not hear it. The minute the hands leave her, she is coughing water from her lungs then scrambling from the tub. She tripped once, twice before forcing herself to run with some control. Her mother’s hands grabbed at her, but she ripped herself away, not wanting to feel anything. Mylene ran to her room, threw open her window and climbed up the ladder.

She was cold and shivering, begging to get sick, but she doesn’t care. She knew even then that she rather be sick and in the cold than scared and drowning in the warm.

On the roof, she thought. There are two places when things come into perspective – at the very bottom and at the very top. She’s been at the bottom for a long time, drowning in it. She knew she was going to be there for even longer, stuck until something or somebody could get her out. There’s no places for her to go. Girls like her don’t go nowhere. They can dream all they want, but something big in this rotten world ties people that look like her back.

Mylene turned her eyes up to the night sky. You can’t see stars properly in the Bronx. Too much smog, too many cars – the stars never been taught how to shine right. But Mylene was thinking, and she was wondering that if somebody just taught them, got rid of all those cars and all that smog, that those stars could twinkle brighter than anything.

With lungs and eyes full of Jesus, Mylene breathes, and vows she won’t stop until stars shine in the Bronx.

* * *

Her mother said promise ring like a curse. It sat over Mylene real ugly, made the hairs on the back of Mylene’s neck rise. Her mother and father brought it up around the dinner table, mouths full of men she should marry and the type of woman Mylene _shouldn’t_ be. Her father scoffed at the disco stars Mylene worshiped.

“Why would you want to be a sinner? You think they’re getting into the kingdom of heaven exposing their bodies and singing their filthy songs? You’re a good girl, Mylene.”

She didn’t say anything back. She didn’t say that she has feelings like these women, and that within her was something deeper than Ramon could ever get. Mylene shoved food into her mouth, nodding as if she agreed, but not really. Her father seemed to be pleased, and because he was pleased, her mother was too. Dinner moved on without her. Mylene’s stomach shook.

She helped with dishes, bumping shoulders with her mother. Her mother didn’t say anything else about the ring or about any ceremony. It was good of her to do, but Mylene knew that it wasn’t for her. Her mother was good at maintaining peace, at covering mortal wounds with slim bandages. This was a fight for another time. Couldn’t they enjoy one night?

When the dishes were dried and tucked away, she stole to her room. She waited until the house was silent before pulling a shoe box out from under her bed. It used to hold a pair of her mother’s sensible heels, but now its filled with clippings from magazines. There’s a picture of a topless Pam Grier and a singing Donna Summers, head thrown back as she hit an orgasmic note. There are countless other women in the box, smooth-faced and brown and not good for her to know about. They’re the type of women her father hates. Dirty women he called them. Men shouldn’t like them, women shouldn’t aspire to be them.

What her father said was law in every place of the house except for her room at night. If Mylene was honest with herself, she could say she didn’t think much about her father’s opinions. She ran her fingers over these women, a stone turning in her tummy as she thought about them. They confused her – did she want to be them or be with them? The feeling she felt looking at Zeke, looking at other boys came to her when she looked at the women. She couldn’t explain it to nobody but Yolanda and Regina, and even they didn’t have a name for it.

Mylene’s father has lots of names for those women and people like them. They’re horrible names, stinging her even when she _knew_ she wasn’t like that. She was a girl that liked to sing, that liked to hop up on couches and act out plays when her parents weren’t home. She was a girl that would someday become somebody’s somebody – even if that somebody didn’t fit her papa’s idea of a clean person.

Mylene held the box in her hands until all the pictures were seen. The minute the last photo was taken into her, she pushed the box back under the bed. There was such a fear of being caught, of being found out. It shouldn’t matter because she’s not one of them, but every time she thought about her father or mother finding it, Mylene felt sick. She’s not upset with herself or ashamed, but there’s the heaviest sensation of guilt and a want for a hiding place.

Besides, the box was already something that was just for her like the roof or the stars.

It's warm when she went up that time. She put her chin on her knees and looked up at the sky. Mylene hummed a song under her breath about places far away and rainbows and dreams that came true. She thought about Donna Summers singing songs about sex and women that dressed anyway the like.

There were no stars in the sky, but that was okay. Someday, she would be where the night sky is illuminated, where she could feel safe. Someday, her heart will rest easy, and she’ll have a word for a girl like her.

* * *

Mylene came home in the middle of summer, hair loose and clothes tight. She was a sight to see, stomping down the street in heels and a purse swinging. It’s been ten years, maybe more, since she ever thought about the Bronx. People say famed changed her. They say once she made her money, she don’t fuck with small people no more and that she thinks she’s too good for everybody. Mylene’s never thought like that. She’s got no right to put herself higher than anybody. She came from the same dirty streets as the rest. Mylene just knew that she’s over scrambling, over being miserable and broke.

She stood at her parents’ front door, taking their love and hugs and kisses with a big smile on her face. Her mother took her bag from her while her father poured her a drink. He gave her a look when she downed it, but laughed when she grimaced.

“Not as good as the stuff you get, huh?”

“No, it’s good. Erm, _mucho dulce_ , that’s all.”

Her mother put a hand on her shoulder. “Oh, how are you, Mylene? Are you eating?”

Of course, she was. Between world tours, limos and bottles of champagne, Mylene felt like she was eating out almost every night. She told her mother half of a story about a weekend on the beach. Mylene’s a grown woman, but still she balked at the idea of telling her mother about the topless women that accompanied her and the men with tan chests.

“And how are Regina and Yolanda?”

“Oh, they’re good!” Mylene said this into another glass of wine. “They’re getting married, you know.”

Her parents gave their tense congratulations. They dance around the subject of marriage, but Ramon does ask, “Should I expect grandbabies at any point?”

Lydia gave him a light smack on the arm. “ _Ramon_.”

Mylene shook her hand. “No, no, it’s fine. Um, I don’t think so. You know, after we split, I’m just focusing on music that makes me feel good. I don’t think I could fit a baby into that, you know?”

Her mother gave a small smile. “I’m still so sorry you girls couldn’t stay together.

 “I mean …, yeah, but things can’t last forever. We collaborate a lot and come together and sing some classics, but the three of us are really just finding our own. Yolanda even has that new soul album out.”

She didn’t ask if her parents heard it. She knew they hadn’t.

It’s all tense smiles and hugs until dinner. Her sister came over and Mylene spent a half hour crying over how big she had gotten. Her sister got married. Her sister had a decent church going husband and a child. Her mother didn’t say anything, but her father’s face spoiled the evening for her. She congratulates her sister and kissed her niece, but she went to bed early. There was only so much of her family that she could take, and not all of their jabs landed on the chin.

 It was amazing to Mylene that she could be a Grammy winning singer, and still couldn’t live up to her parents’ expectations. It was like if she wasn’t waddling around with babies, or serving a man a plate of food, she wasn’t anything.

(She knew it wasn’t true, but that’s what it _felt_ like, and sometimes feelings outweigh what’s real.)

The first thing she noticed was that her bedroom hadn’t changed a bit. It’s a shrine to her, untouched by time and human hands. Her mother probably dusted it daily. Mylene chuckled at the thought as she came to sit on her old bed.

So much of her childhood was spent here, singing and dreaming. She used to dream so much, and most of the thing she aspired to be came true. The people she knew all became stars. She and her girls, Zeke and his friends – even that fiend Shaolin made something of himself. The smile that came to her face was genuine, sparkling in the dim lamp light.

A thought came to her as she observed some of the trinkets on her dresser. She bent to look underneath the bed. She didn’t think it would still be there. She thought her mother would’ve fished it out, threw it all away or something like that. A sad smile brushed across her face as she pulled out her box of forbidden pictures – nasty women and singers she wasn’t supposed to like. If the young Mylene could only see how free she was, how _happy_ she was.

She held each clipping up, reliving the feelings she first felt when looking at them. The lust turned into something softer, a kind sort of admiration. Mylene wondered if she was a nasty woman to some girl, if some downtrodden teen wished to look like her.

Her shoulder sunk. Oh, how it hurt to be young, but how good it felt to grow up. Her eyes turned to the window. She saw the fire escape.

Didn’t she used to sing that song with Jackie Moreno? Something about the roof? It became a huge hit after he had Mylene sing it on stage. She’s not sure if she remembered the lyrics, but she tried, starting slowly with, “ _Come with me, and we shall run across the sky…_ ”

Mylene imagined that her parents were kissing her sister and her husband off. They’re putting away dinner and tidying up the kitchen. They’re getting ready for bed. Her father’s doing bible study tomorrow.

_And illuminate the night._

She climbed up every fire escape she’s seen, but nothing feels like the one from home – rusted and aging.

_I will try and guide you,_

She went up two levels and then three. The apartments over her childhood home are empty now, husks of the former selves blown by the winds of time. She thought she remembered the upstairs neighbor bringing casserole after her little sister was born.

_to better times and brighter days._

She could see most of the Bronx, of her new home Manhattan. She wondered if this is what Zeke can see too, and Yolanda, and Regina.

_Just don’t be afraid._

Mylene’s never been afraid of heights, never been afraid of getting to the top. When her feet connect with the roof, she felt a sense of familiarity. This was a place where things made sense, where she could learn something new about herself. She used to consider the roof to be a place of understanding. Everything that hurt, everything that stung was taken to the top and seen in brighter lights.

Mylene took a seat at the edge with her feet dangling over. She looked up at the sky. There were still no stars in the Bronx. Still too much smog and more cars than there used to be – ain’t no way for nothing bright to shine. She knew that wasn’t true either. There’s countless twinkling things, glittering where her eyes just can’t see them. She used to be one of those things. She just had to dust herself off, hold herself up to some good light.

_Come up the ladder to the roof_

She can’t afford to think bitter any more. She has her moments of melancholy, but they are cut short by the idea of hope. Some little girl probably dreamed of her. Just as she wished to be Misty Holloway, a small thing with a big voice wished to be Mylene Cruz.

_Where we can be, where we can be_

_Closer to heaven, closer to heaven_

In the dark of night illuminated only by New York’s never-ending glow and the blinking lights of airplanes, Mylene hummed. After years of wishing and hoping and _praying,_ Mylene thought she could finally feel the some of that heavenly glow on her face.

She rested easy.

 


End file.
